Week of August 20: A Sense of Places

By Sylvia Gurinsky


The Christian Science Monitor has an article about how communities become characters in television series where they're supposed to be set:


http://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/TV/2010/0811/A-character-not-listed-in-TV-dramas-The-city-itself


From time to time, that can happen even when a television program isn't shot where it's set.


YesterTube takes a look at settings this week - the five best on-location shows and the five best shows at setting a location:


First, let's go travelling, in no particular order:


*Hawaii: "Hawaii Five-O," CBS, 1968-80: There's nothing the new production can do to make Hawaii look any better than the original series made it look for 12 years, and still makes it look in the DVDs. Series creator Leonard Freeman and the equally talented directors he hired (including Charles Dubin, Michael O'Herlihy and Leo Penn (father of Sean)) were able to get Hawaii's seamy and glamorous sides.


*New York City: "Law & Order," NBC, 1990-2010: New York has a sense of loss for this show, which let The Big Apple be itself, warts and all.


*Los Angeles: "Adam-12," NBC, 1969-75: Producer Jack Webb was terrific at realism, through "Dragnet" and many of his other shows - including this one, which featured two patrol officers in their often less-than-routine days.


*Miami: "Miami Vice," NBC, 1984-89: When NBC programming head Brandon Tartikoff suggested "MTV Cops" to Michael Mann and Anthony Yerkovich, the pair came up with a city on its way back from race riots and refugee resettlement. Miami during the 1980s was, indeed, a city on the verge, and the show featured its architecture and colors like nothing else.


*Everywhere: "Route 66," CBS, 1960-64: It's been forgotten just how gutsy this series was. It's still the only fictional series in television history that used all of the United States as its backlot.



Now for five series that made the California backlot look like home:


*Korea, "M*A*S*H," CBS, 1972-83: It was shot at the 20th Century Fox ranch in the mountains of Southern California, but the cast and crew really did make this look like the Korean War - complete with similar unpredictable weather and creepy-crawly creatures.


*Walnut Grove, Minnesota, "Little House On the Prairie," NBC, 1974-83: Michael Landon and Ed Friendly and company were able to take their California set back a century, to Laura Ingalls Wilder's time.


*Walton's Mountain, Virginia, "The Waltons," CBS, 1972-82: Like "Little House," this series touched hearts with its realistic portrayal of a past time - in this case, series creator Earl Hamner's youth in Depression-era Virginia.


*Washington, D.C., "The West Wing," NBC, 1999-2006: From time to time, the cast and crew would use the real Washington as their back lot. But they took a lot of Eastern influence for their genuine-looking White House set in sunny Cal. Of course, the show's West Wing had a lot more corridors than the real White House reportedly has!


*Mayberry, "The Andy Griffith Show," CBS, 1960-68: Was there ever really such a place? Perhaps just in the imagination of series creator Sheldon Leonard.


See you next week. Until then, Happy Viewing!